The Kulp-Ebsen feud far outlived the television show during which it began
Both Nancy Kulp and Buddy Ebsen served with the US Navy during World War II, she as a line officer with the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES); he as a commissioned Coast Guard officer aboard the Navy frigate USS Pocatello. Their mutual sea service did not ingratiate them with each other. Ebsen was a right-wing conservative with strong anti-communist sympathies, deploring all liberals as communist sympathizers. She, a liberal, viewed some right-wing activities as anti-American, such as the Motion Picture Association of America and its allied House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Ebsen and Kulp frequently discussed politics between filming on the show, and the result was backstage fireworks including name calling, threats to quit, and other disruptions, noted by other cast members.
Years after the successful program was canceled, part of a purge of rural shows by CBS in 1971, Nancy Kulp ran for Congress in her native Pennsylvania. Buddy Ebsen, who had never lived in Pennsylvania and at the time (1984) maintained his home in California campaigned against her via radio advertisements, informing Keystone State voters that Nancy was “too liberal for me”. She lost, and though she did not blame her defeat entirely on Ebsen, she did remark that his efforts were personal rather than purely political. The Beverly Hillbillies remains a popular series in reruns on nostalgia networks, with fans enamored of the shrewd but illiterate Jed, the animal loving but coy Elly May, (…”fellas can be more fun than critters”), the relentlessly stupid Jethro, and the rest of the out of place hillbillies and their California friends.